News
March 21, 2016
JD Kraaikamp: It's been well over 4 years since I did an update on this page, but once again, Coach Random has been moved to a new home—this time on my personal website—and has had its coding completely redone. The old XML+XSLT website was a lot of fun to do, but it was unsearchable by Google and—let's face it—a little dicey when it came to browser support.
So it's back to PHP generating good old HTML.
As always, feedback is always welcome. Email me at mrinitialman@aim.com.
The Strips
The strips are in 4 groups: storylines, subjects, and comic wars, (as they were on the original site), and in chronological order.
Storylines and Subjects
On the original page, most of the comics were either in storylines or subjects; there was no chronology. In homage to that, I have set up something similar on this website.
The storylines are in alphabetical order, rather than in the order they ran. However, the dates they ran are displayed on their respective pages.
Any strip not in a storyline has been organized into subjects. In some cases, one strip will show up under more than one subject.
If you click on the strips in the storylines or subjects pages, you will be taken to that strip's chronological page. (Same goes for the strip on this page.)
Comic Wars
One way the Cavalier Daily comic artists had fun was to mock each other's comics in what was called a Comic War. Coach Random was involved in 3, and they are shown here. The strips shown in these wars are not Scott Ruhl's work, but are copyright their respective artists.
Chronological
In the chronology, all strips are given their own page, and are in order of publication. Each strip has commentary from the webmaster, artist, and/or contemporaries of the comic, not only on the strips, but also on things going on on the comic page involving Coach Random. Of course, Scott Ruhl is the final authority on that.
Since the strips appeared in a University newspaper, they are broken up into semesters, rather than years. Each strip is shown in the order that they appeared in the Cavalier Daily.
The date these strips were drawn is also given. However, in many cases, the date is absent, since JD has no idea when they were drawn, and Scott can't remember.
History
Coach Random ran in the Cavalier Daily—the student newspaper of the University of Virginia—from August 29, 2001, until April 23, 2004, when Scott Ruhl graduated.
He also maintained a site, featuring his comic, on the university servers, where the webmaster of THIS site, John-David Kraaikamp, discovered it, via a link in the now-defunct comic "Ghost Cat". Unfortunately, Scott's site was deleted when he graduated.
John-David finally found, through much searching and emailing, Scott's AIM Screen name. After some chatting, John-David got permission to put Coach Random back online.
This was made possible thanks to the Cavalier Daily, who had its archives still online. Thus, using his trusty, dusty computer, John-David set to work on Dec. 15, 2004, on a great undertaking: The return of the original Coach Random.
This task was made much easier when Scott Ruhl sent him a full archive of strips, including some that had been censored from the Cavalier Daily. All JD needed to do was put the strips in chronological order, according to when they were published.